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The Franciscan Catholic church in Manhattan, on W. 31st Street, between 7th and Broadway, is just a stone’s throw from Madison Square Garden, so it’s only right for the building to represent.

There’s another sign too. A humble metal one, simply engraved “Workers Chapel.”

I’ve walked by this sign many times over the past couple years and thought “howboutthat.” I’ve been intrigued by the idea of it, but I’m not a Catholic, or a church-goer, and I haven’t been seeking religion.

So, it wasn’t until I read in a NYC Central Labor Council newsletter that the chapel would be holding a “worker’s mass” open to people of all faiths that I decided to pursue my curiosity.

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St. Francis holds worker’s masses every third Wednesday of the month, at 12 noon, and they’re kept quick, so you won’t be away from work too long. When I went last month, it was a tidy 25 minutes.

In that short time, I experienced something that many months of unemployment — and frankly, many years of employment — rarely provide: dignity.

Joblessness is heavy with loneliness, competition, rejection, shame, fear about poverty, fear of being forgotten. For 25 minutes, those heavy vibes felt a bit lighter.

Fr. Brian Jordan spoke about the dignity of all workers, regardless of if they are people just getting by or Wall Street millionaires.

He led everyone to pray for two workers who’d recently died on the job: Xiaoyuan Li, a painter who died in the May 22 shipyard explosion in Staten Island, and a worker who died at a construction site in Queens, whose name was unknown. Father Brian said that when we prayed for them, it didn’t matter what faith they practiced; it didn’t matter if they were Catholic or not.

And of course he quoted the gospel. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” There were ‘Our Fathers,’ songs, and communion.

Then he mentioned that the parish house office would be closed Friday in observance of Juneteenth, and before I knew it he said “I know some of you need to get back to work,” and that was that.

A few weeks later, I went back to the Church of St. Francis of Assisi. And beneath the gothic spires, between the stained glass windows, cascading down over the church steps to flutter above the heads of church-goers hung another banner:

St. Francis of Assisi Welcomes Everyone to the WORLD CUP!

I’m there this time to talk to Father Brian, who in addition to being a Franciscan friar also has a Master of Professional Studies in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University. (If you’re unfamiliar, the Cornell ILR School is a seriously impressive institution. Among many other things, it maintains a useful labor action tracker.)

“When you put on the Franciscan habit, it allows people to trust you,” says Father Brian. “They know that we aim to serve, not to be served. We try to help.”

When I speak to him, he’s not wearing a habit; he’s wearing shorts. He’s right though—I can tell he wants to help, not be idolized. I’d have felt comfortable asking him to help me carry something cumbersome up the stairs if it wasn’t gonna take too long.

He got the idea for the Workers Chapel, which was dedicated in November 2024, for a few reasons. Back from their creation about 800 years ago, the Franciscans have had a closeness with those who labor, he explained. Being that this particular parish is just a few blocks from Penn Station, where commuters from all walks of life pass through to start their work day, it seemed like a good fit, he says.

“For me,” he said, with a little shrug, “work is part of God’s creation.”

We discussed the mass I’d attended, and I asked him why it was important to make it clear that he meant all workers, from the unemployed to the underpaid to the people on Wall Street making a million dollars.

The meaning, he said, is to honor the dignity of all human labor. Each person is gifted with certain talents and called to use those talents in service to the world. Some of those talents and services may pay better than others, but the workers still labor.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t see a wealth gap.

“There’s definitely inequality,” he says. “The rich get richer the poor get poorer. People are saying enough is enough. … We have to create opportunities. Not just say ‘there are haves and have-nots’.”

I ask about the remembrances of the fallen workers. He credits the NYC Central Labor Council for their efforts to collect information about people who died on the job, saying that while they know there are others whose deaths won’t be reported, he believes “the known unknowns deserve to be remembered.”

We also, of course, talked about the World Cup.

The banner “St. Francis of Assisi welcomes everyone to the world cup,” hanging over the steps was written in a wide variety of languages—a welcome mat for the myriad of global tourists and local fans going through Penn en route to World Cup matches at “New York / New Jersey Stadium.”

“In a world which is lacking in hospitality, especially from the White House,” said Father Brian, “we show hospitality.”

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He said the World Cup has been a blessing, not just to the church (where their regular Spanish- and Korean-language masses were especially well-attended) but the city, and the country.

He wishes Iran’s World Cup team had played their matches at the nearby New York / New Jersey stadium, instead of in California and Seattle. “We’d have welcomed them.”

The Church of St. Francis of Assisi also has a LGBT ministry that promises inclusion and community support. And while there is a “so you’re thinking about becoming a Catholic” book you can pick up (for free) in the parish office, Father Brian stresses that this is non-essential.

This, he says, is the Franciscan way.

“Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist, immigrant, non-immigrant, LGBTQ … you are welcome here.”

Workers’ mass takes place every third Wednesday of the month, at noon. The next one is Wednesday, Aug. 19.

So now that I’ve written what seems to be a ringing endorsement of a church, I should say, that I still am not interested in becoming Catholic. I don’t know if I’ll visit the chapel again.

But I might. I definitely might. And that says something.

If you’re unemployed, consider going because you want to be reminded what it’s like to be held to a lunchbreak. Go because you want to hear someone talk about the importance of human labor. Go because St. Francis of Assisi has a counseling service that charges on a sliding scale. Go because you’re itchin’ to pick up one of those free books. Go because Father Brian seems like a good guy.

In the meantime, Father Brian’s words for we shiftless workers without a workplace are this:

“Persevere. Do not give up. Do not give up.

“There is a place for you.”

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“If an employer can’t reasonably explain why an AI tool screened out a qualified, applicant, we should be afraid,” says Ashley Upkins, president of the National Bar Association.

Yesterday, I wrote about automated employment decision tools (AEDTs), like applicant tracking systems (ATS) and AI video interview tools. I discussed what they are, how they work, and what job seekers should understand about the concepts of “AI bias” and “algorithmic monoculture.” Do these tools reduce workplace discrimination, expand workplace discrimination, or some of both? Do certain individuals get “algorithmically blackballed,” rejected by multiple employers who use the same tool?

A big theme: transparency. Applicants don’t know when employers are using the tools, and employers don’t know as much about these tools as they’d like. Tech vendors give employers some information about how an AEDT ranks and scores candidates, but not always details about why the tool scored them that way.

Upkins, among other legal experts, says that’s not good enough.

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What do New York City workers and job seekers need to know about their rights as they relate to employers’ use of AI, including New York City’s Local Law 144, which specifically sets rules on AEDTs? And how can unemployed New Yorkers manage the AI-powered job search, using the law to their advantage?

Why are We Worried About This Again?

A quick recap. The “training data” that AI models learn from is “historical data”—information that already exists. This means that the biases from our history can perpetuate themselves in the future, if the training data is not thoroughly audited for biases. Ashley Upkins, President of the National Bar Association points out that this is the source of some of the “AI governance” issues in policing as well.

“There’s a lot of work to be done, because of simply the people that are the ones coding,” she says. “The people who are creating the tool, that tool is naturally going to have many of their biases. And much of the information that they deem is important or not.”

Two cases currently working their way through the courts in Northern California have brought greater attention to the issue as it relates to employment.

Derek Mobley, a disabled, black man over age 40, brought a discrimination case against applicant tracking system company Workday on violations of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Mobley reported that he’d been rejected for over 100 jobs for which he was qualified, all by companies that used Workday’s software to manage their candidate applications.

Mobley said he often received those rejection notices within hours of applying. That led him to suspect the decisions were automated. Mobley asserted that Workday operated as an employment agency. According to the amicus brief:

Workday systems made automated decisions on behalf of employers to reject certain candidates; and the Workday platform was the exclusive point of entry for many job opportunities.

Workday has tried to get the suit dismissed, but while the courts did not agree that Workday counts as an employment agency, per se, a California judge last month ruled to allow this case to proceed in court.

In another class action case, Erin Kistler and Sruti Bahnik v. EightfoldAI, the plaintiffs say the AI-powered “talent intelligence platform” used by many Fortune 500 companies is violating their rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). EightfoldAI creates profiles on applicants (and potential recruits) not just from the information on their application, but from all manner of places. From the complaint:

Eightfold’s technology lurks in the background of job applications for thousands of applicants who may not even know Eightfold exists, let alone that Eightfold is collecting personal data, such as social media profiles, location data, internet and device activity, cookies and other tracking, to create a profile about the candidate’s behavior, attitudes, intelligence, aptitudes and other characteristics that applicants never included in their job application. These job applicants have no meaningful opportunity to review or dispute Eightfold’s AI-generated report before it informs a decision about one of the most important aspects of their lives—whether or not they get a job.

Although this case is unfolding in California, it potentially has unique implications for New Yorkers, because the New York State Department of Labor is one of its customers.

NYSDOL uses Eightfold to power the Virtual Career Center that matches NY workers with employers. (I’ll be doing a follow-up story on this with more details.)

New York City Law

Those cases will have implications eventually for recruitment tech vendors’ legal liabilities. In the meantime, in New York, Local Law 144 specifically sets rules on the use of automated employment decision-making tools (like Workday).

LL144 is supposed to bring at least some transparency to the process. It doesn’t solve the problem of making tech companies explain more about their technology to employers, exactly. It does, however, require employers and employment agencies to explain some things to employees and applicants. And, indirectly might cause employers to press tech companies for answers.

Any worker who lives in New York City is protected by LL144; regardless of the location of the company’s headquarters. LL144 mandates that employers and employment agencies:

• Ensure “automated employment decision tools” undergo a “bias audit” every 12 months before they start using them.

• Publish the results of that audit on their own website.

• Notify workers about the use of these tools at least 10 days before these tools are used. This notice must state:

  • That the tool is being used

  • The job qualifications and characteristics that such automated employment decision tool will use in the assessment of such candidate or employee.

  • That an individual can request an alternative accommodation.

• If not disclosed on the employer or employment agency’s website, information about the type of data collected for the automated employment decision tool, the source of such data and the employer or employment agency’s data retention policy shall be available upon written request by a candidate or employee. Such information shall be provided within 30 days of the written request.

Workers can report violations of LL144 to the New York City Department of Consumer and Workforce Protection (DCWP). The DCWP can impose civil penalties on the company between $500 and $1,500 per day for violations.

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One interesting twist, by the way, of the Mobley v. Workday case. Workday had an internal bias audit done, for the purposes of obtaining legal advice. In May, a magistrate sealed this audit information under client-attorney privilege.

However, companies who use Workday tools in New York City still need to comply with LL144, which legally requires them to publish the results of an independent bias audit of Workday’s tool.

“The sealing should be only for purposes of the California case,” explains Matthew Marks, partner of Queens-based law firm Ricotta and Marks. “It should have no impact on the reporting requirements of LL144. I see no reason why they would not be required to report it.” “

“If Workday denied any information needed for LL144 compliance,” he says, “that would create a problem for customers but not necessarily a legal excuse. Employers would have to evaluate whether they can continue using that feature in NYC.”

LL144 is a landmark law. A leader in the country.

So far, however, it isn’t making an impact. No companies have been penalized for violations.

Good Law, Weak Enforcement

The New York State Office of the Comptroller released a report in December outlining weaknesses in DWCP’s LL144 enforcement process.

They found that some complaints people made (some made by calling 311) were never routed to DCWP in the first place. Then, while the DCWP reviewed 32 websites and bias audits, they only identified one example of non-compliance; when the Comptroller’s office reviewed the same cases, they identified 17. DCWP is supposed to tap the technical expertise of the Office of Technology & Innovation for support on these cases, but they didn’t.

The report also says, “despite DCWP’s initial stakeholder education, additional educational outreach has not been performed.” In other words, people that oughta know about Local Law 144, don’t.

Attorneys confirm that, from their experience, compliance with and awareness of LL144 remains low.

“Transparency still remains one of the law’s weakest points and it is still on the job seeker to be able to recognize violations and report them as they come about,” says Thomas Ricotta, partner of Queens-based law firm Ricotta & Marks. “Enforcement has also been limited because the law only recently became enforceable mid-year 2023 and regulators have only really relied on voluntary compliance.”

“Here’s the unfair truth,” says Upkins. “The unfair truth is that most applicants would never know if AI was used in their decision making. … They will never know unless the employer follows the law.”

“We do not yet have strong evidence that Local Law 144 has significantly reduced hiring bias unfortunately,” says Ricotta. “Local Law 144 is a great first-generation AI governance law as it has changed employer behavior and increased awareness, but is better viewed as an accountability measure than a proven solution to hiring discrimination.”

The DCWP did not respond to requests for comment on this story. The Comptroller’s office says they typically conduct follow-up reviews on reports like this one within one year.

Still Worth Reporting LL144 Violations

Although there is no personal right of action—meaning that you cannot sue the company for damages directly—through LL144, attorneys say that an individual could use this violation to support their case if they decide to pursue a different kind of litigation.

You have probably heard of the federal laws like the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

In New York City there are also anti-discrimination and human rights protections for workers based upon their height and weight, their caregiver status, their salary history, their credit history, their criminal record, their citizenship status, and more.

Attorneys explain that a violation of LL144 could be used as supporting evidence in a civil case against an employer.

So if DCWP doesn’t issue penalties for a LL144, but a worker feels their other human or workers’ rights have been violated through use of that technology, “They can then go right ahead and sue under human rights law,” says Upkins, “and they can use non-compliance with Local Law 144 to prove their case.”

The AI Governance Hot Potato

Nobody wants to be held responsible if an automated employment decision tool discriminates against someone or otherwise doesn’t return results that are adequately “explainable.”

“Absolutely there are arguments on both sides,” says Upkins. “Employer doesn’t know how it works exactly. ‘Ask the vendors.’ They file under ‘trade secrets.’ ‘Oh these are trade secrets! This is protected information. It’s how we make our secret sauce!’ So they a lot of times fight you when you try to get what they say are their their trade secrets or the algorithms.”

“So I think what policy-makers need to do,” she says, “is ask a more practical question which is: can the employer explain what the tool is evaluating?”

“There’s no reason that any vendor or any employer shouldn’t be able to answer that question when you’re evaluating people and their data. Right? Can the tool document or can the employer document that the tool is being tested for bias? Can you say that the tool is being tested for bias? Can you say we are testing this tool for bias? Here’s how we’re doing it. If they cannot do that, they should not be using that tool.”

What NYC Job Seekers Can Do

If you decide to report a company to the Department of Consumer and Workforce Protection, take hot tip from the Comptroller’s report: don’t go through 311. Go directly to the DCWP. Your complaint is more likely to reach the right place.

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You can do this anonymously, but if you do it by name, then it helps you if you decide to take this to court later. You can look out for class action suits to join.

These anti-discrimination cases don’t always find the subtler things.

“As far as transparency, an applicant should be able to understand AI played a role in my hiring decision, or my promotion decision, and this is what they evaluated and this is how they evaluated it.”

Of course, in the meantime…you still don’t have a job. Lawsuits take time. Bad-mouthing places you might want to work is…complicated. So what are your other options?

“The candidates who get through tend to have had some kind of human touchpoint before the application,” says Jacob Wickett, a headhunter and founder of recruitment agency Live. “A referral, a conversation or even a LinkedIn message. That’s often how it works right now.”

So, continue to “build your network,” and take care about how you answer the “how did you find this job” question on applications.”

“Ask questions,” says Upkins. “We know you need the job, but that doesn’t mean people can do any old thing with your information, your application, your resume.”

What Am I Going to Do?’

I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure if any of the organizations I’ve applied to are compliant with Local Law 144. After reporting this story, I’ve begun to think about how I might approach my job search a bit differently. Here’s my advice for myself.

If you are a NYC job seeker too, and ready to share your experience or tips, drop me a line!

• Advice to self, number one: More networking. Reconnect with the people you know and meet new people. Sure, that could be at a job fair or a networking event. It could also just be ANY TIME YOU LEAVE YOUR HOUSE.

• Check to see if you can find a company’s hiring practices listed on their website. You may be surprised by what you find. I’ve seen some that describe a lengthy multi-step process and others that explicitly say they don’t use any automation and that each application is viewed by a human.

• If you don’t want to get involved in a 16-step process, then consider not applying at all. If you know a real carbon-based life form is going to read your resume and cover letter, then make a new resume and cover letter, which are written to be consumed and enjoyed by humans.

• When logging the jobs you apply for, log the platform they use, like Mr. Mobley did.

• Practice interviewing specifically for AI interviews. There are services to help you do this.

• Get a tattoo that reads “algorithmically blackballed.”

• Take care of yourself. It’s tough out there. And after reporting these two stories, I am convinced that it’s even tougher than I thought.

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Frustrated job applicants who suspect that no human being has ever looked at their resumé might have a point.

As both employers and job applicants increase their use of AI and automation, researchers and regulators are taking a closer look at these tools. Two key questions: does employment decision technology make the hiring process fairer, by reducing the impact of hiring managers’ personal biases? Or does this technology make the hiring process less fair, by automatically weeding out the same applicants over and over, based upon the tools’ default programming? Or both?

Job seekers want answers. Employers don’t have them.

Fortunately for New Yorkers, the city passed legislation, Local Law 144 (LL144), that requires employers and employment agencies to notify employees and job seekers that they are using “automated employment decision tools.” They are also required to say how they are using them and publish the results of that tool’s “bias audit.” The law went into effect in 2023, but attorneys say, it hasn’t made an impact yet.

The current situation is a difficult one both for the unemployed and the employers. In some cases, technology is not only being used to screen resumés anymore; applicants are being filtered by personality quizzes, online skills tests, and AI video screening interviews with an attractive AI agent… all before the applicant speaks to a human. Recent research indicates that while some of these tools perform very well at AI bias audits, at least some of these tools return results that adversely impact Asian and Black applicants, and might potentially “blackball” individual applicants.

So, what can job seekers do? Many applicants are trying to fight AI with more AI, — but that’s actually part of the problem.

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What Hiring Looks Like Today

If you are a job seeker yourself, you might be familiar with applicant tracking systems (ATS). You might even have saved your passwords for Greenhouse, Workday, Workable, SuccessFactors, and BambooHR or others because so many of the jobs you apply to use their software platforms to manage applicants.

An ATS supports human resources teams in many ways, but one of its major functions is serving as the bouncer of the talent acquisition team.

An ATS resumé scanner is the first one to review the candidates and suggest who should make it to the next stage. It doesn’t own the business, so its recommendations of who gets through the door and who waits in the cold can be overruled by the person in charge. But the person in charge is very busy, so if the ATS says you’re not getting in, you’re probably not getting in.

And like any bouncer, the ATS does not respond to human language. That’s why career services experts typically advise job seekers to “ATS optimize” their resume, to make it a machine-readable document. (Professional ATS optimization can easily cost hundreds of dollars, but there are free services through the library.)

Career services experts recommend that job seekers further optimize the resumé for each individual job. So applicants run it through an “ATS resume scanner” like Rezi or Jobscan to get an estimate of how well it scores against the job description.

Things that potentially dock points off a resume are: too few years experience, too many years of experience, having the dates formatted in the less desirable way, using the word “creative” when they were looking for the word “creativity,” or failing to have the precise target job title (Associate Vice-President and Undersecretary of Whatnots, APAC Region) listed among your prior experience.

Tidying up each resume can be a time-consuming process, and frustrating for applicants who put forth the effort, but fail to get interviews.

Many job-seekers have therefore brought more automation into their own process. Some resume scanners now have AI tools built in that will “auto-optimize” the resume.

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And then there are extreme automated tools. LazyApply, FastApply, LoopCV, AutoApply, and others that will automate the entire process—searching for jobs, optimizing the resumés/cover letters, and bulk-applying for them without the applicant even knowing what the roles are.

Sometimes 50 jobs a day.

Sometimes a hundred a day.

Sometimes a thousand.

HR’s Dilemma

“I’d push back on the idea that ATS tools are the villain here,” says recruitment agent Wickett. “When ‘apply to everything’ became the default job search strategy, recruiters had to start filtering faster. The tools only exist because the problem started existing first.”

Wickett says that the application volume problem has significantly escalated just in the past year, as the auto-apply tools hit the market.

Recessions, tight job markets, and desperation might have contributed to the original “apply to everything” advice in the first place. Whatever chicken or egg started the problem, the challenge both HR teams and job applicants are following—volume—is real.

Tatiana Teppoeva, AI hiring strategist for ONE Nonverbal Ecosystem, explains that the volume of applications isn’t the only problem. Because everyone has optimized their resumés for ATS systems, HR teams cannot distinguish one candidate from the next. Everyone sounds the same. Including some cyber attackers posing as job candidates.

This is why companies are requiring more from applicants—projects, references, cover letters, portfolios, games, tests, video interviews, etc. Teppoeva was a data scientist and researcher for Microsoft and Boeing for 17 years (including eight years working on AI) before founding her own business. She now specializes in helping companies understand the strengths and limitations of their AI video screening tools—what they find and what they miss about candidates.

“Companies are not using these tools just because they’re so cool,” she says. It’s out of necessity.

So now it’s a battle between employers’ AI and applicants’ AI. She likens it to the arms war between cybersecurity professionals and cyber criminals. Applicants try to break through employers’ defenses, and employers respond by adding more layers of defense.

“It’s a chase,” she says. “Cat and mouse. It’s a real problem.”

It Must Be Working…Right?

While the technology cannot be blamed for creating all problems, it isn’t solving all of them either.

In December, 36% of respondents to an Express Employment Professionals-Harris Survey said they have open positions they cannot fill, mostly because applicants lack necessary experience. A report last month from the National Federation of Independent Businesses found that 84% of the small businesses who were hiring or trying to hire found few or no qualified applicants.

For some roles, experience is hard to come by, but for others, it might just be hard for the technology to recognize.

“Am I happy with the results? Honestly, no,” says Wickett. “I’ve seen people who would have been great hires screened out because their resume doesn’t tick the right boxes in the right order.”

“The tool isn’t exactly wrong, it’s just not asking the right questions,” says Wickett. “It’s looking for a shape, not a person and some very good people don’t have the right shape on paper.”

What are the right boxes? What’s the right shape? That’s not that easy to say.

Explainability and Transparency

Teppoeva describes how the mystery doesn’t unfold with AI video screening interviews. These interviews might be “asynchronous,” which is a video the interviewee pre-records and uploads, or “synchronous,” which is a live interview between the candidate and an attractive AI agent.

What are these tools measuring? Like a usual screening interview, they are trying to measure “professionalism,” communication skills, enthusiasm for the position, knowledge of the subject matter.

But how?

As they record or analyze a video, they may measure and rate the candidate by the content of their responses, the length of their responses, the background they are using, their attire, their facial expression, how close they are to the camera, etc.?

But…how?

What makes a candidate score poorly? What attire or setting is considered professional? If a person is naturally a bit shy, or has an accent, Teppoeva says, that might impact their score. Or it might not. It depends upon how the AI model was trained.

“From a statistical standpoint,” she says, “all of these models – whether it’s video or it’s resumé screening—they look for patterns. This is how models are trained.

(To “train” an AI model, you first feed it enormous sets of information—called “training data.” The more thorough, and more accurate the training data set, the better the AI will be at “inferring” accurate conclusions later. There’s a concept in software programming called “garbage in, garbage out.” If you fed it a bunch of pictures of dogs and said “that’s a dog” but only showed it pictures of golden retrievers, it might have a harder time later inferring that a Pomeranian is a dog.)

As Teppoeva explains, the tools measure candidates — or whatever they’re measuring — against a “standard deviation curve.”

“If a person fits that curve well, then they score well or whatever the measurement system is incorporated. If person doesn’t fit the curve, it will be an outlier and most likely filter it out. So if model is trained on American population, any accent will be more of an outlier, because it will not be fitting the pattern of the main speaking American population. However if we take a population like me for example, with Russian accents and we train model on this accent, then I will be a majority, I will fit the pattern and an American-speaking person will not fit and they will be the outlier. So it really depends on what they are trying to do.

Tech companies don’t typically make those kind of details clear. They show the answers; but they don’t show their work.

Wickett says, “Transparency depends on the software and some tools are better than others at showing their thought process. But I haven’t used one yet where I felt like I fully understood why it ranked someone the way it did.”

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“When companies get results,” says Teppoeva, “they say ‘WOW, this person Tatiana, you know her from previous years, and now she’s trying to do promotion at our company, you know she’s good worker, but the tool screens her and gives her a bad rating.’

“We don’t know why it did it, and we can’t explain it, and this is the biggest problem,” she says. “The results and the output cannot be easily explained.”

Is There Discrimination?

So, if the technology cannot be explained, how do you know that it’s not discriminatory?

That is the role of AI bias audits.

An example is this one, from AI recruitment company Braintrust AIR, which published the thorough results of an independent AI bias audit of its technology. (This is the type of document that employers should be posting on their website if they use this technology to hire in New York City, as required by local law.)

Braintrust AIR’s audit shows that the tool doesn’t create adverse outcomes by gender, ethnicity, intersectional ethnicity, age, veteran status, or disability. However, Teppoeva points out that bias audits test for anti-discrimination on certain groups protected by law, but they miss subtler things—like shyness. They also don’t provide clarity on how the tool treats other common issues — like employment gaps, job switching, immigration status, a degree from a different country, or whether the applicant used too much boldface text in their resumé document.

A study released in May by researchers from Stanford, Chapman, and Northeastern Universities reported evidence of bias in a gamified recruitment tool called pymetrics, which was developed specifically to be bias-free. Pymetrics scores applicants based upon their performance on a variety of online games.

They had two main findings. First: there was evidence of clear racial disparities that negatively impacted applicants who self-reported as Asian or Black—enough so that it would violate US civil rights legislation.

We find clear racial disparities in applicant outcomes. Of all applications submitted by Asian and Black applicants, 14.74% and 25.87% are submitted to positions that adversely impact Asian and Black applicants, respectively, according to U.S. employment discrimination standards.

Plus, they saw reason for concern about an “algorithmic monoculture”—meaning that while there are thousands of employers, there are only a small number of recruitment tech companies, so whatever a tool’s algorithm decides about a person could impact their application at multiple jobs.

Individuals also receive homogeneous outcomes: 4% of all applicants who apply to 10 positions are recommended for rejection from all positions, a rate higher than expected by chance.

…

Our findings establish empirical evidence to support the claim that shared dependence on a single hiring algorithm vendor yields homogenous outcomes.

In other words, an applicant who is “algorithmically blackballed” as they call it, could be rejected from every job they apply to, and to the best of their knowledge “this pattern of systemic rejection is unique to algorithmic hiring.”

The researchers are clear that they only tested one tool, and they cannot confirm that the same results would apply to other gamified recruitment tools, resume screeners, or AI video interview assessment tools.

However, if these results could be representative of other tools—if these tools can create discriminatory adverse impacts against entire groups of people, and if widespread use of the same tools across thousands of companies can cause certain individuals to be blackballed from the workforce—who’s responsible?

Well, we’re still working that out.

Where the Law Stands Now

Tomorrow I’ll give a run down on a few things:

• The status of a discrimination case a job seeker brought against software company Workday,

• What NYC Local Law 144 is, and how it can (or should) help workers understand how companies are using automated employment decision laws like these

• How workers can pursue anti-discrimination charges outside of LL144

• What else workers can do to help navigate the job search, in light of the amount of automation being used today.

Check back for that tomorrow. It’s all exhausting.

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We jobless people are easy marks.

Salespeople and fraudsters can smell our fear. If we’re not careful, “career services” peddlers or actual criminals will quickly shake us down for a $500 “ATS optimization” here and a $600 training module there, soothing us with reminders to “invest in ourselves” as they pocket our severance checks before we even know what ATS optimization means.

True, many professionals in the career services industry are wonderful, ethical angels who provide exceptional practical and emotional support worth paying for, if you can. What if you need help, though, without the added financial burden?

To that, my broke brethren, I say: get thee to the library.

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You’re going to hear that a lot at The Jobless New Yorker.

I start most conversations now—on job searching, money saving, entertainment, wellness, research, education, sports, socialization, community support, generally enjoying life—with “did you check the library”?

If you haven’t visited your local branch since third grade, you might have missed a thing or two. So, for starters, have a peek here:

• New York Public Library Career Services (Library branches in the Bronx and Staten Island share the same library system as NYPL.)

• Queens Public Library Job & Business Help

• Brooklyn Public Library Career Help

One-on-one career advising, resumé reviews, tech training, language lessons, LinkedIn Learning access, job fairs, and more for FREE. For many services you don’t even need a library card. For some you might not even need to live in New York! Check out the rules about applying for a free NYPL library card here.

Get started there and subscribe here. Every week on the JNY newsletter I’ll feature something else the libraries are doing to make you gainfully, adequately employed and paying your rent.

As a preview:

• With your library card you can access LinkedIn Learning for free. The best price you can get paying out-of-pocket for LinkedIn Learning is $239.88/year.

• Another unbelievable NYPL offering is studio40: a free recording studio where you can not only take free music, video, and podcast production classes, but also borrow free equipment.

• If you land a virtual interview (congratulations) and find yourself thinking ‘how will I get a decent computer, a nicer apartment, and a better-behaved family by Wednesday,’ then see if you can reserve a Virtual Interview Room at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. Note that you do need a physical NYPL library card and you need to book 48 hours in advance.

There are branch libraries all over the city. Get to know yours.

Buy me a coffee! (please)

Not only are these institutions free, but our stately library lions—the ones who greet guests outside the Stephen A. Schwarzman building on 5th Avenue—are the perfect mascots for unemployed New Yorkers. They were originally named Lenox and Astor. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia nicknamed them “Patience” (on the left) and “Fortitude,” because those were the two qualities the city residents would need most, to survive those hard times.

Those of us feeling the hard times now need that same patience and fortitude.

So go give the lions a pat on the head for luck, and get some free stuff while it’s still in the city budget.

• I feel real good about this!

• I feel real bad about this!

• I feel so helpless!

• Which underwear really is my lucky underwear?

• How will the President make this more difficult?

• Will this ever end?

I’m young enough to have missed the first title, old enough to have caught Bill Bradley’s first run for Senate and to scream in desperate helplessness at the screen while a certain white Ford Bronco interrupted Game 5 of the ‘94 Finals. So I’ve been waiting a very long time.

I paid my dues. As a Bleacher Report columnist during in the cold bleak Phil Jackson years, I diligently watched every second of the 2014-15 season—all 65 losses. (Sorry for bringing that up. I know it left a deep emotional trauma many of us are still processing.)

Through the pain, there were bright spots. I found hope. I saw Mitchell Robinson’s potential and occasionally allowed myself to imagine a future in which the Knicks were actually good again.

And here we are. Up 2-0 in the Finals. The city so joyous, so united, that it even brought violent crime numbers dropped significantly. We can taste victory.

I want to believe it. But it’s not here yet, and I am terrified of doing something to jinx the outcome.

Worse, I am fighting the totally irrational, completely sensible, absolutely ludicrous, definitely true notion that my career and the Knicks’ title hopes are cosmically linked.

In what way, though? Do I only get a job if they win? Do I need to land a job in order for them to win? Do I need to continue making this sacrifice of being unemployed, in order to assure their win? What do the basketball gods want of me?!

This kind of spiritual deal-making may seem…overdramatic.

One could make a reasonable argument though, that, mathematically speaking, I have more influence over the Knicks winning a title than I do over myself getting a job.

If a better-funded friend brought me to a game, for example, I could shout my support to the players, rally towel atwirl. Even if it my voice was just one among about 19,800, the players would still definitely hear it. Choose my moment and my decibel level wisely, and my own voice could cut right through, during the several hours we have together.

That seems like better odds than my resumé gets.

In today’s competitive job market, many job listings receive hundreds of applications within 24 hours, 1,000 over a weekend. Automated screeners slash those numbers down viciously to make it manageable for the overwhelmed talent acquisition teams.

Only about 25-50 of those applications are viewed by a human, who will scan it for about 10 seconds if they don’t like you, a minute if they do. Only about 10 applicants get a screening interview, sometimes conducted by an AI interviewer. So only about 5 applicants will actually get a real interview, and if I am one of those, I will hopefully be wearing my lucky underwear, and not unlucky earrings.

It’s grueling, it’s exhausting, it’s a demoralizing slog, punctuated by periods of momentum, moments of feeling really optimistic…only to be disappointed again.

My fellow jobless Knicks fans, we won’t be disappointed forever.

We toughed it out through all the point guards with knee injuries, all the draft picks that went awry, and all the turnovers.

This time…this time might actually be when the Knicks’ land the grand prize.

And soon might be our time, my jobless friends--to land our dream jobs, or at least the job that pays the bills for now. We just have to keep toughing out, keep grinding through the agony of defeat, fighting off the exhaustion, fend off the feeling that we’re not strong enough to survive double overtime.

We’re in it together, New York.

Let’s git it.

(That doesn’t count all of us who are unofficially unemployed, but that’s a story for next week.) Seasonably adjusted figures indicate that 7,373,000 Americans were officially unemployed in April 2026, and of those, 246,600 lived in the five boros. (That’s according to the Local Area Unemployment Statistics, a joint effort by the state labor departments and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

Do the math and that means more than 3 of every 100 unemployed Americans live in NYC.

About 1 of 100 calls Brooklyn home. (Note, though that county-level numbers are sadly not seasonably adjusted.)

Before you start feeling really bad about us, and moving out of town to some nice little town and raise your children among proper people with proper jobs, consider a few things.

Why are there so many jobless people in New York? Because there are so many of all kinds of people in New York.

Yes, the unemployment rate here is currently higher than the national average. April’s city-wide average of 5.6% was much higher than the national average of 4.3%, and the Bronx routinely has one of the highest unemployment rates of any county in the state.

However, the bigger factor is that, we’re just big, from a population standpoint. New York is a big place, but as acreage goes, it is still just a teeny-tiny pinpoint on the wider map of the U.S. of A.

Not even 500 square miles. But we have far, FAR more residents than anywhere else—an estimated 8.47 million. We’re smaller in square mileage than L.A., with twice the people. There are many areas of America that have fewer than one person per mile, and we have thousands.

Hundreds of thousands of workers commute to the city from neighboring counties and out-of-state. So, it’s worth keeping tabs on their success rate too.

How could we not, even just out of respect to the New York Knicks? Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson spent their formative years in New Jersey (Middlesex County, where the best people are born, just sayin’). Many of our local broadcast team are locals too—Mike Breen is from Yonkers and both Alan Hahn and Wally Szerbiak are from Long Island.)

I’ll include updates about these figures in subsequent newsletters as new numbers are released each month.

Until then, my jobless friends, take from this data one message. Although you may be miserable, you are not alone. You are in good company.

A lot, a lot, a lot of company.

This newsletter will explore that cost-of-living question. Not just the part about the cost; the part about the living.

Surviving unemployment isn’t only about saving money. It’s about shame, loneliness, and fear, and maybe about joy, hope, and possibility. It’s about taking care of people who rely on you. Recognizing yourself in the mirror. Having a good time once in a while, so you’ll unwind and other people will find your presence somewhat tolerable.

It’s about the job search grind. Resumés, optimizations, and applications, job fairs, business cards, and networking events, career counselors, training sessions, and certifications, interview practices, social media posts, and “personal branding.” The search for an employer who will sponsor your work visa. Anxiety about AI murdering your future. Excitement about finally starting your own business. Feeling too old. Feeling too young.

And yeah…paying for stuff.

The Jobless New Yorker will cover a bit of all that, specifically for people in the five boroughs.

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There will be pointers to and features on the wide array of FREE STUFF in the city, like free career services, free community support, and free entertainment.

There will be news, research, and features, including original reporting and data analysis, about issues relevant to labor and unemployment in the city.

Most of all, and most importantly, there will be personal experiences of unemployed people in NYC—myself and my personal gripe list included, but not exclusively.

So, if you are unemployed too, drop me a line and tell me your story.

There may be prettier cities. There may be other cities with art and culture. There may be other cities with a rich, deeply layered patina of filth that match ours or ones that boast the same lovely bouquet of hot urine and garbage during the summertime.

But no other city in the world has us. (Unless the Knicks are in town.)

So, I’m writing for us. The ones who all speak the same language despite speaking over 200 different languages. The ones who give up their seat on the subway to a stranger carrying a heavy burden and can tell when that heavy burden is simply “LIFE.” (But not you guys who read your cell phones while walking up staircases…you’re on your own.)

I’m writing The Jobless New Yorker to better understand the NYC labor market, make my own situation more bearable, and remind myself daily why I live in this gorgeous, gross place.

Hopefully it will do a little of the same for you. Thanks for reading.